Credit: The Associated Press

A relative of a passenger aboard the sunken ferry Sewol prays as she waita for her missing loved one at a port in Jindo, South Korea, Monday, April 21, 2014. Divers continued the grim work of recovering bodies from inside the sunken South Korean ferry Monday, securing a new entryway into the wreck, as a newly released transcript showed the ship was crippled by confusion and indecision well after it began listing. The transcript suggests that the chaos may have added to a death toll that could eventually exceed 300. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

JINDO, South Korea — The grim work of recovering bodies from the submerged South Korea ferry proceeded rapidly Wednesday, with the official death toll reaching 146, though a government official said divers must now rip through cabin walls to retrieve more victims.

The victims are overwhelmingly students of a single high school in Ansan, near Seoul. More than three-quarters of the 323 students are dead or missing, while nearly two-thirds of the other 153 people on board the ferry Sewol when it sank one week ago survived.